The Loneliness of the Long Distance Thinker: Sraffa, Marx, and the Critique of Economic Theory

Abstract

Sraffa’s relationship to Marx remains a controversial topic. After the opening of Sraffa’s Archive in 1993, with the Sraffa Papers (SP) and the Sraffa Collection (SC), we know that the Italian economist changed his attitude on the labour theory of value (LTV). In 1927–31 he was very critical of the LTV whereas in the early 1940s Sraffa thought that his inquiry would vindicate the ‘Old Moor’. A few years later he abandoned this view of strong continuity, however even after the publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (PCMC) Sraffa maintained a positive judgment on Marx’s transformation procedure and even more than that he interpreted the results of his book in terms of capitalist exploitation within an amended Marxian discourse. It is perhaps with such restropsective that Sraffa would write in October 1975 that ‘in economic theory the conclusions are sometimes less interesting than the route by which they are reached’ (SP C26; Letter to C P Blitch).

To say what Sraffa’s cultural project was which he pursued with persistence and extreme coherence through the whole of his life both in practical behaviour or in theoretical work, I would put it in this way. First of all, Sraffa was a communist, in the negative sense in which the word is used by Marx, to imply an ongoing critique of the given historical process. This is what he was, and always aimed to be. However, at the same time, he was convinced that the critique should be entirely rewritten, because the old one was no longer sufficient. Napoleoni (1996 [1988], p. 299)